Open communication could avoiding a Ferguson in CT, officials say

Published 12:04 am, Sunday, August 24, 2014

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Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton

Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton

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This screen grab from a YouTube video show Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch speaking at a rally on McLevy Green in Bridgeport, Conn. The rally was held in response to the shooting death of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. less

This screen grab from a YouTube video show Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch speaking at a rally on McLevy Green in Bridgeport, Conn. The rally was held in response to the shooting death of Michael Brown by a police ... more

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy visited the New Haven, Conn. street corner where 15-year-old Jacob Craggett was killed Aug. 8 in a triple shooting. On the trunk of a Subaru Impreza parked out the Craggett home, Gov. Malloy wrote a $100 check to a memorial athletic scholarship fund set up for the slain teen. less

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy visited the New Haven, Conn. street corner where 15-year-old Jacob Craggett was killed Aug. 8 in a triple shooting. On the trunk of a Subaru Impreza parked out the Craggett home, Gov. ... more

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy visited the New Haven, Conn. street corner Friday, Aug. 22, 2014, where 15-year-old Jacob Craggett was killed Aug. 8 in a triple shooting that also wounded the teenâÄôs brother. Malloy then wrote a $100 check to a memorial athletic scholarship fund set up for the slain teen. less

DANBURY -- If the stories of civil strife over a lost life in suburban St. Louis have brought anything home to government leaders in southwestern Connecticut, it's how quickly a community can break apart without strong local leadership.

As tensions between officials in Ferguson, Mo., and people protesting the fatal shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer continue to hold national attention, southwestern Connecticut leaders stress the lesson is not lost on them.

Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch made the point last week at a rally for Michael Brown, the teenager whose shooting Aug. 9 by a Ferguson police officer sparked protests, looting and intervention by state and federal officials.

"One of the ways we are going to make sure as a community that it never happens here is by having rallies like this for us to speak out and communicate clearly that this is not acceptable in a civilized city like Bridgeport, Conn,," Finch told the crowd.

Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton said there is no guarantee that civil unrest would have been avoided had Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III let protesters known from the beginning that their concerns were taken seriously.

But doing nothing, Boughton said, virtually assured a bad result.

"The breakdown in communication led to a breakdown in the sense of community," Boughton said. "Everybody doesn't have to like the message, but there has to be a message. When there is no message, everyone rushes in to fill the vacuum, and that creates fear and mistrust."

While neither mayor has seen anything in his tenure on the scale of the unrest in Ferguson, the crises they have faced have taught them the importance of getting out of the office and into the streets.

"We have had our shootings, but the thing that most traumatized our neighborhoods was the (2010) tornado," Finch said. "The biggest lesson we learned is to immediately thrust ourselves into the situation."

Finch said he went straight to the hardest-hit neighborhoods as quickly as possible to assure residents they would be secure, their power restored quickly and the neighborhood protected from looting.

Boughton said a mayor needs to stay visible in a crisis so that there is someone in charge to take the heat.

He himself kept a high profile in 2006, when Danbury's efforts to round up undocumented immigrants led to a civil rights lawsuit and vocal protests at City Hall.

"I'm not saying we don't have our problems -- we do, but in general people in this community have mutual respect," said Boughton. "It takes work to do that and a lot of it is communication."

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy made the same point Friday when he visited the New Haven street corner where 15-year-old Jacob Craggett was killed Aug. 8 in a triple shooting that wounded the teen's brother.

Malloy offered his condolences to their mother, Lisa Craggett, and walked the beat with New Haven police officers and Mayor Toni Harp in an effort to highlight community relations with law enforcement.

"We've got to get people working together," Malloy said.

Joining Malloy was Michael Lawlor, the state's undersecretary for criminal justice policy and planning, who said Connecticut would have responded much differently to the police shooting that has sparked national outrage.

"This is not Missouri," Lawlor said. "We're not rolling tanks in the streets, no matter what happened."

In Connecticut, all police shootings are referred to the office of the chief state's attorney for investigation, said Lawlor, taking the cases outside the judicial district where they take place.

State mayors and officials might have the right approach as communicators, but local governments need to do more to bring whites together with blacks and Hispanics if they are going to avoid a Ferguson in Connecticut, one observer said.

"We don't sit around and say, `Who should I call?' when there is a fire in a school," said Glenda Armstrong, president of the Greater Danbury NAACP. "We already know who to call because we have a plan. Let's have a plan for this just like we have a plan for everything else."

Part of the plan should be racial-sensitivity training for police departments, Armstrong said.

Political expert Gary Rose said local governments need to create commissions and committees where minorities can be recruited into service.

"In places like Danbury and Bridgeport and Ferguson, you need to have some type of mechanism where minorities feel represented and you can cultivate black leadership and Hispanic leadership," said Rose, chairman of the government and politics department at Sacred Heart University. "That is something that is missing in Connecticut cities."

The breakdown of brotherhood started Aug. 10 in Ferguson, a city of 21,000 that is nearly 70 percent black, with a police force more than 90 percent white.

Mourners were attending a vigil for Brown, who was unarmed and shot six times. After the vigil, some mourners started looting.

The following night, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters. That led to further clashes on Aug. 12 and 13. State police took control of security, but the situation got worse. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency in Ferguson and called in the National Guard.

The lack of local leadership and the failure to ask clergy and civic leaders for help soon enough allowed a bad situation to get much worse, the Connecticut mayors said.

"We rely heavily on our faith-based ministries and civic leadership," said Finch. "They are not politicians. They have no motive but to help restore the calm."

Both Finch and Boughton said they would have been the ones to organize demonstrations before the protests took on their own momentum and left local leaders powerless.

Armstrong said that has not always happened in the past. She recalled the 1998 slaying of Franklyn Reid, a 27-year-old black man, by New Milford police officer Scott Smith, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of criminally negligent homicide.

"They defended the policeman just like the mayor did in Ferguson," Armstrong said. "There is a Ferguson in every town if you have the right set of circumstances."